Category: Delta

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Hairs Thursday #2

I suppose these hair clips qualify as Bow Ties o’ the Day. They present my hairdo. And in other pix you can see the cockatiels Tie o’ the Day I wore when getting my hairs done. In this first photo, you can also gander at my Hearing Aid o’ the Day.

I handed Suzanne my baby bow hair clips and said, “Do what you can with these.” She did. I’d actually wear this ‘do out ‘n’ about– like at the beach or on a walk. But Suzanne and I discovered that whenever I moved, they slipped out of my hair. Yes, my hair is a tiny bit fine. It is extra fine. Not one hair of my hairs has known a thick day in its life. Thinnest. Hairs. Ever. Almost. Suzanne’s are thinner.

I have had some skilled hair cutters throughout my earthly existence, and I thank them for dealing with my uncooperative locks. Dot Atkinson cut my hairs all through my kidhood, then Jim Robson opened up his shop by Curley’s and I sat in his hair chair for a year or so. I ended up having my hairs regularly hacked by Sandy Ferrell– for years before I moved to Maryland and then for years after I returned to Delta. Here in Centerville, my hairs hacker is Tiffany at Great Clips. She has hip tattoos and she appreciates mine. Since I haven’t had my hairs sheared since May, Miss Tiffany might or might not still work there. I hope she still cuts there, cuz I trust her.

Back in the day when I was a wee sprite, every church Ward went to Sunday School on Sunday morning at the same time (and Sacrament Meeting was in the evening). On church mornings our house was aflutter with kids being dragged out of bed to eat breakfast and get bathed and gussied up in church duds. (We had only one bathroom at the time.) I even remember Mom often drying my brother, Ron’s dress socks in the oven, and once she was so harried she forgot about them and they caught fire. Sabbath circus.

What does this have to do with hair? Well, I’ll tell you. I don’t know whether Mom or Dad asked, or if my grandma, Zola Wright (Momo), suggested it, but on Sunday mornings, I was sent next door to my grandparents’ house in my pj’s before putting on my dress for church. Momo or Popo lifted me onto a towel on the kitchen counter, where I laid on my back, with my head over the edge of the kitchen sink. Momo used the sink sprayer to wash my hair. Our house was one fewer person of chaos for Mom and Dad for a few minutes, and I felt loved by the inhabitants of two houses. It was as if my grandparents’ home was just another bunch of rooms in our own house.

Thirty years later, I bought my grandparents’ house, which Suzanne and I had for seventeen years– until we sold it two years ago. That kitchen sink and kitchen counter where Momo washed my kid hair were still there when it became mine. They were in atrocious shape, and I should have replaced them.

But I never did. Not even when I remodeled the kitchen. I couldn’t. They were daily reminders of how much I belonged to Momo and Popo–especially with my dirty hair on Sunday mornings. As a growing kid, I was devastated when I grew too big for their kitchen counter. Even my stubborn, thin hairs were sad. And after I sold the house and walked through its rooms one last time before driving away in my red truck forever, it was that decrepit sink that broke my heart.

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Same Coin, Different Sides

With its random bandaids, Tie o’ the Day represents love and the pain love inevitably causes us. We’ve all needed to heal our hearts when they have been broken. If we allow ourselves to love, our hearts will break many times while we live. Family members and friends pass away. Our pets meet death. Maybe someone we fell in love with fell out of love with us. Maybe we lose hope, and our dreams die.

If we choose to, we can empathize with each other’s broken hearts, because most kinds of losses happen to everyone. If they haven’t happened to you yet, they will. We’re part of the human race, and our lives follow similar trajectories. Birth. Relationships. Work. Aspirations. Death.

Loving is worth any pain that might accompany it. A broken heart is often the cost of a full heart. And broken hearts can be instructive. We have the power to look inside that broken heart at all the mistakes we made which caused the heartbreak in the first place. We can learn from those mistakes, and we can get a little better at the practice of love.

Two months after Mom and Dad graduated from Delta High School, they got married in the Manti Temple. Dad had barely turned 18, and Mom didn’t turn 18 until two months later. They were youngsters. Nobody should get married that young, in my opinion. The odds of a couple that young–and therefore that dumb– staying together are miniscule. Mom and Dad somehow found a way to kick the odds and stick together. They lasted 59 years together before Dad died, in December 2007.

Dad suffered through his pain for two years. He stayed with us for as long as he could– for all of us, and especially for Mom. During the last two weeks of Dad’s life, Mom often told him it was okay for him to let go. She told him she would be okay. She told him we would all take care of her. Dad knew we would. But I believe one of the reasons Dad held on for so long is that he was trying to make it another few months, to be with Mom on their 60th wedding anniversary.

Of course, no matter when Dad died, Mom’s heart was going to break anyway. And when he finally did let go, her heart did break. Eleven years later, it’s still broken. But Mom’s heart is also still full of memories and time and the adoration Dad gave her. It’s impossible for that kind of splendid stuff to ever fall out of even the most broken heart.

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It Appears They Liked Each Other

Bow Tie o’ the Day has its Valentine’s Day targets ready for Cupid’s arrows. Be on the look-out for a near-naked, winged baby armed with a bow and arrows.

When I first saw the picture with visible faces, I wondered who the heck Dad was hugging. It didn’t look like Mom to me, so I got my magnifying glass out. I discovered that it really was Mom. The shadows across her face were just weird. Whew! I was worried for a millisecond. Not!

Anyhoo… Something you might not know about Mom is that she is disgusted that people wear un-ironed clothing– particularly to church. She and Peggy Crane spouted off about the general lack of ironing on the planet a bazillion times while I drove them across the county on their daily drinking rides.

Mom and Peggy even threatened to put an ad in THE CHRONICLE, offering to teach people how to iron. FOR FREE! But they decided that wouldn’t do any good since, according to them, no one knows what an iron is. (Oh, my! What a wrinkly world we live in.)

One morning in their Senior year, Dad didn’t show up at school. Mom had no idea where he was or if he was sick. (Remember: no cell phones in 1948.) Later in the afternoon, Dad showed up in a class they had together. Mom quizzed him on his earlier whereabouts and he told her he had been doing an extra job for somebody, to earn some extra cash. And then he handed her the few dollars he had earned that morning. She asked what the money was for, and he said, “Well, if we’re going to get married, we’re going to need an iron.”

Based on all the stories Mom and Dad told me over the years about their courtship, that anecdote is the closest thing to a marriage proposal I ever heard about.

So Mom bought an iron, and 71 years later she still has it. Last I heard, it still worked.

I’m sure I’m reading far too much into this, but I think the sweet “iron proposal” is responsible for Mom’s enduring attachment to the importance of ironing. That would explain Mom’s pet peeve about ironing. I don’t know why ironing mattered so much to Peggy though– unless Grant proposed to her the same way.

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Mom’s A Looker

When I was gathering my Valentine’s Day ties and bow ties to use in my posts, I hadn’t planned to create so many posts about Mom and Dad. But I’m finding it to be quite fun, and y’all seem to be liking the pix and stories about their love affair too. Thus, I’ll put aside some of the other Valentine-y ideas I intended to present, and the neckwear and I will show and tell a few more snippets about my parents.

Tie o’ the Day is content to hang in the background, while Mom stars in this morning’s pix. These are evidence of Mom’s alluring ways. Dad was born into a beekeeping family, and bees were his thing. He was crazy for bees from the minute he could toddle. Based on that fact, I have no doubt Dad thought the photo of Mom dressed up in beekeeper attire was the sexiest of these two pictures. Mom does have nice legs though.

I posted the following story about Mom and Dad a couple of years ago, but I’ll tell it again for those who might have missed it:

Dad’s family lived in Delta. Mom was from Oak City, where the kids went to school until high school, when the Oak City-ites finally rode the bus to Delta High School every day. Mom and Dad didn’t know each other until that came to pass.

But they had sort of met once before high school. Dad and his pals were at the swimming pool at the same time Mom was there with her friends. (I think it was the Oak City pool.) Mom was standing by the edge of the pool when Dad walked by and pushed her in.

Mom was ticked, turned to her gal pals, and said, “Ignernt Delta boys!”

Dad smiled, turned to his friends, and said, “I’m gonna marry that girl.”

And he did. And she wasn’t even a bee.

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The First

Four wood Bow Ties o’ the Day have arranged themselves into an interesting frame, to highlight a tremendous milestone in my family: Mom’s and Dad’s first grandchild. Of course, that means the little rugrat is my first nephew. Jeff Tucker has been in the family for around five decades now. Today is his birthday, so “Merry birthday, Jeff!”

In this picture, from left to right: Mom; Jeff; my grandpa, Leroy Anderson; my grandma, Zola Wright; and little ol’ me with my straight bangs. The grown-ups are overjoyed in this photo. Jeff is wide-eyed at all the attention, and I look somewhat stunned. But you can easily see Mom is absolutely gleeful.

Mom worked as a “lunch lady” at the high school during this time. When she learned Jeff had finally been born, Mom dressed up in a gray wig, tossed a shawl over her work apron, and grabbed a cane. She walked into work looking like the stereotype of a doddering old grandma, yelling, “I’m a grandma! I’m a grandma!”

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Office Lunch. Office Not-lunch.

Circles and browns. That’s Bow Tie o’ the Day. Shirt o’ the Day is seeing the state of the planet more clearly with its zillion pairs of glasses. In this photo, we are hanging with Suzanne in her office for an hour. It’s time for lunch. It’s cold outside this time of year, so our usual lunching at the park is not an option. This place will have to do until spring temperatures show up.

Suzanne eats yogurt for her meal. For my meal, I watch Suzanne eat yogurt. I’m never hungry at that time of day. I like to hang with Suzanne at lunch because I can make sure she takes the time to eat. I like to know she hits PAUSE from her duties for a bit, and also for a bite.

The other reason we lunch together is because we need to right now. This has been a tough year for us, relationship-wise. No worries. We are more than fine, and we will continue to be more than fine. We’ve just had some tinkering to do.

Before we sold the Delta house, it was necessary for me to split my time between both places. Now that we’re in one house, I’m in Suzanne’s face and space all the time. Even though living in one house is exactly what we’ve always wanted, we have both had to make adjustments to our daily routines. The more time we spend together, the more the tinkering pays off.

I also think my summer surgery made last year more problematic, in terms of our relationship. In some ways, it’s made us closer. But recovering meant I had to mostly be a slug, which meant Suzanne had to take over the house and outside errands. She also got a hoity-toity promotion, which means she got handed a long list of more responsibilities, which means longer hours at the office. For a few months, I was just one more job she had to do. And I felt incredibly guilty about that. I still do. Suzanne said she was happy to do it, and even happier that I let her. It’s almost impossible for me to accept help with anything. (Except the computer glitches. Suzanne is welcome to fix my computer issues at any time.)

In the context of these things, can you feel the occasional tension popping up?

With fashion, I always try to achieve dis-harmonic clash. In relationships, clashing is not ideal. Suzanne and I are on the same page on pretty much everything, but there is always a torn page or two in any relationship. There’s always relationship work to be done. You can love someone– as in, you can feel love for someone. But for that love to be “real,” you have to commit to doing the verb of love too. You have to actively love, by doing things to show the love you feel. Sometimes we forget that fact.

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Oh, Happy Day!

I successfully finished my prescribed physical therapy for my stoopid rotator cuff this morning. I’ve been PT-ing for two months, and I am pleased to report my shoulder has full motion and is no longer painful and incapacitating. I have an exercise routine I’ll need to faithfully continue to do in order to keep my roto cuff in shape, but I’m done visiting the physical therapist twice a week.

In celebration of this delightful news, I’ve got some bright colors going on. Bow Tie o’ the Day is especially joyous. Its colors and fabric design are based on the incredible stained glass windows in Chartres Cathedral in Chartres, France. I’ve seen plenty of photos of them, but I think I could handle seeing the stained glass windows of the cathedral in person. Maybe it wouldn’t kill me.

Suzanne spent time in Europe twice when she was a young whippersnapper in the 80’s. She has always wanted to take me there for a long-ish vacation. She especially wants to show me London. Now that Rowan is no longer a child and is out of the house, we can certainly go if we want to. And, of course, Skitter loves to have Suzanne’s sister, Marjorie, stay here with her when we’re off somewhere, so leaving the Skit is not an issue. It is I who have been the hold-out.

First, I’ve never cared much for doing bigly travel. I did spend a fantastic two weeks drinking beer all over Ireland 20 years ago, but I’d rather take many short jaunts, instead of fewer major jaunts. I’m fine with just seeing mostly non-touristy, out-of-the-way cubbyholes of the U.S. of A., which I can find anywhere we go.

Second, with Mom being so old (88-and-a-damn-1/2), I haven’t felt comfortable with the idea of being an ocean away from her for an extended period of time. I’ve consistently told Suzanne I won’t go out of the country until after Mom passes away. But the other day, for some reason I started to feel differently about it. I told Suzanne we didn’t need to put off going on a European adventure anymore, because I think Mom will probably live another 88-and-a-damn-1/2 years. We’ll die before she does, so we might as well renew our passports now, and start saving and planning to go wherever and whenever we want.

But we’ll certainly buy travel insurance.

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Mom Was Spot-on Today

Bow Tie o’ the Day joined me and Skitter on a scenic drive to Delta to visit Mom at MCR. Skitter traipsed around the halls in her red plaid bow tie collar, her cowboy hat, and her camo coat. Of course, she was a hit. Wherever she goes, Skitter is always ready to be in a pageant. She’s a star. But Mom’s stardom towers over all of us. She was in bigly feisty, funny form this morning.

Mom’s blood sugar has been excessively high for the last few weeks. When her nurse came to check Mom’s sugar numbers, she asked which finger Mom wanted her to prick today to get some blood for testing. Well, Mom was her usual smart-ass self. She immediately said, “Which finger do you use to flip the bird? I want to use that one. Is this the right one?” She had it exactly right. These pictures are proof.

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I Was 21. That Explains A Lot Of Things.

Bow Tie o’ the Day presents me in 1985. This was back in the day when you were required to have your Social Security number visible on your ID. Here’s a noggin’ o’ some hairs I was pleased to have. I liked this cut. And yup, that’s a yellow tail hanging down on my right shoulder. I had that for a couple of years, and I changed the color often. I remember going red, blue, and green at different times with my pet tail.

Mom hated the tail. While I was in Graduate School at the U of U, Sandy Ferrell cut my hair when I was in Delta during school breaks. Mom got more and more apoplectic every time she saw the bright chunk of hairs just dangling there on my shoulder. She threatened to pay Sandy $50 to “accidentally” chop off my colorful tail. No need. About a couple of months after this photo was taken, I shaved my head for the first time. Unfortunately for me, I shaved off my head fur during the winter, and my head froze bigly.

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Eating Fancy

Bow Tie o’ the Day is one of my bow ties you have to see up close, in order to fully appreciate it. If you scrutinize these tasty chicken drumsticks, you’ll see a few of them have already had a bite taken out of them. Clever little details like that make an already fine bow tie extraordinary.

Although chicken is not an exotic meat, the exquisite Bow Tie does remind me of menus I encountered in frou-frou restaurants when I lived in the Baltimore/Washington, D.C. area. I lived there eight years, so I ate at a few of the finer establishments on occasion.

I was always surprised to see the most outrageously priced entrees on the menu were things like venison, pheasant, trout, rabbit, duck, elk, etc. I did not know, until I moved to back east, that I had spent most of my life eating exotic meats.(Asparagus was considered an exotic side dish.) And, of course, all those meats were free for us. Apparently, even when we had no money, we ate as if we were rich. We were obviously too stoopid to know it. We were redneck hicks, and I’m still proud to be the white trash I was taught to be.

Did I ever sell my soul to pay for one of these fancy meals? Yes. One time. I was curious, and I ordered duck. It did not compare to the duck Mom prepared. In fact, its taste did not resemble duck at all. Duck fail! The worst part of it was that after I paid for it, I was too broke to eat out for another six months.

Once, when I was a kid, Dad headed to California to hang with his bee family, and he was going to be there longer than usual. It was winter– the time of year when we were usually tight on money. He gave a guy a can of honey in trade for the guy to bring Mom a few rabbits for us to eat while he was gone.

A few days after Dad left for California to babysit his precious bees, the dude brought Mom the skinned rabbits in a bucket. She thanked him, and off he went. But when Mom started to put them in a big Tupperware container to put them in the fridge, something about them just didn’t seem right to her. When Dad called to check in, Mom told him there was something hinky about the critters. Dad told her not to use them and he’d deal with it when he got home. Somehow, Mom managed to feed us while he was gone. Hell, we probably ate honey for every meal.

When Dad got home, he opened up the Tupperware container. He said a word or two that I won’t write here. Those skinned “rabbits” were cats. Dad left the house for a couple of hours, and when he came back he had the can of honey he had bartered for the rabbits. And a couple of hours after that, the rabbit guy showed up with a dozen real rabbits, a sheepish apology to Mom, and looking a bit roughed-up. And I remember he brought authentic rabbits to us every now and then throughout the winter. Dad was a very persuasive guy. It wasn’t about the deal. It was about hurting cats, and feeding his family, and messing with Mom.